Wednesday, 29 January 2014

So, Labour has announced at the weekend that it will keep the 50p tax rate. *Sigh.*Even though Balls' commitment to balancing the books is to be applauded (three years late, but better late than never) and although the economics is ok in terms of paying down the debt (if in fact it raises money, which some people, including HMRC, doubt), it is still terrible politics, as I wrote three years ago.Even if the overall tax burden is the same, all the Tories will say, and all people will hear, is "Labour's putting up taxes", as they did in 1992. I guarantee you.That is all.

His "previous" on playing for time is well-known, as it was with the mooted release of Julia Tymoshenko, and the proposed EU trade agreement, neither of which ever happened.

It may even conceivably be to do with something else, less reported: the window-dressing Putin is doing for Sochi in the next few weeks – it is difficult to see the real puppetmaster of the Ukraine wanting a bloodbath on his doorstep in the middle of his pet project.

In fact, I suspect this itself is another of his pet projects. If you want to understand why, you need only look at a map of the area around Moscow.

Thursday, 23 January 2014

﻿The opportunity for Labour to score party points against the Tories on the economy is clearly diminishing. While that is difficult rather than disastrous, our reaction is important.

Last week, FT’s Janan Ganesh tweeted a characteristically shrewd observation: influenced by campaign groups, Labour seemed to have furthermore abdicated responsibility for forming a competing macro policy. It had therefore embarked on a series of eye-catching micro initiatives with social aims – intervening in energy markets, stopping payday loans and so on – but had gone quiet on the economy at large.

While many of these measures are fully respectable and positive in themselves, they are hardly a substitute for a robust macro policy, clearly distinguished from the coalition’s. And the obvious danger is that while the coalition looks strategic, we look, to put it bluntly, like tinkerers rather than players.

Tuesday, 21 January 2014

With the world’s apparentdisengagement from politics-as-usual,it is tempting to think that traditionalpolitics is dying and there is somethingnew happening. Broadly, there is, but itmay not be quite what we think.

In 2011, a movement called Occupy was born. It wasa grassroots political movement –inspired by theSpanish “Indignados” and the so-called “Arab Spring”– which decided to occupy major public spaces toprotest at the lack of “social and economic equality”in twenty-first century society. Two years on, it seemsthat traditional politics has rarely been so out of favour.

This is not just evidenced by such examples of “directaction” politics. It is backed up by voter turnout nosedivingat recent elections and a long-term declinein the membership of political parties across thedeveloped world.

Young people, not surprisingly, often prefer to beinspired by exciting mass movements with broad, ifrather fuzzy, objectives. It beats sitting in stuffy partymeetings, or knocking on doors to ask residents ifthey are happy that their bins have been emptied ontime.

On the other hand while we should be gladthat the world’s youth seems to be turningtowards some kind of political participationrather than apathy – if of a less traditionalsort – this form can also sometime seem alittle directionless. One has to ask oneselfexactly what has Occupy achieved to date?It has “raised awareness” about “issues”? Sowhat?

Although one might agree that the“Indignados” had a point about theunappealing state of Spanish politics, Spainis at least a pretty free and democratic state.Seen from outside, these things are surelyrelative.

One imagines that people in, say, a numberof despotic African states would look onsuch things and smile a wry smile; that suchmanifestations are the tantrums of young,privileged people who do not really appreciatewhat they have. As do, I am sure, oldergenerations of Europeans who lived through aworld war. Democracy, as Churchill observed,“is the worst form of government, except forall those other forms that have been triedfrom time to time”.

Furthermore, while it is easy for the Occupy,and others, to argue that traditional politicsis somehow reaching the end of its naturallife and is about to be replaced by somethingelse, no-one is really quite sure what. Moreimportantly, it is a conclusion for whichhistory shows little support.

Representative democracy, when accompanied by a state where citizens’freedom is valued, has shown itselfhistorically to be surprisingly robust. Longstandingdemocracies such as the UK orSwitzerland have found their democracies tobe remarkably stable over recent centuries.And most others have only found theirdemocracies, once established, disturbed onlyby outside threats to their way of life, like theUS Civil War, or by massive economic shocks,such as those present in Europe in the 1930s.

Indeed, one of the remarkable and largelyunsung advances of the 20th century wasthe spread of democracy in the post-warworld, a trend of which the Arab Spring isonly the most recent example. Countriesall over Asia, Europe and South Americaconverted themselves to the democratic way.For example, with the democratisation ofIndia in 1947, what now constitutes a sixth ofthe world’s population moved to democracyovernight. And if China ever does, well, thatwill surely sound the death-knell for trulytotalitarian states.

And the disengagement from politics in thedeveloped world, as shown by reduced voterturnout, is clear: but it also tends to be acyclical phenomenon. Unsurprisingly, peopleare more likely to protest by not voting, ortaking to the streets, in times of economicdownturn; just look at the the 1980s, or the1960s.

In short, there are good historical reasonsfor us to be optimistic about the future ofrepresentative politics. However, there arealso a couple of negatives of which we wouldbe wise to take note.

One major phenomenon which has risen inrecent years is the advent of the “pseudo-democracy”– democracies with poor regardfor freedom and human rights, or where thereare strong suspicions that elections are notentirely free.It is not hard to create a pseudo-democracyby limiting free speech, threats, coercion, torture and so on. Elections can also be“fiddled”: not just by tampering with thevoting mechanisms and electoral reporting,as countries such as Venezuela are stronglysuspected of, but by electoral bribes,intimidation, non-secret ballot and unequalaccess to media.

The point is that a vote, as with a country’sfree speech, is either free or it is not. Thereare no in-betweens. The minute you makeeither one uneven between one individualand the next, you are no longer a properdemocracy. And the worst thing about apseudo-democracy is that it is always indanger of slipping back into authoritarianism,as is happening in Venezuela, Turkey andRussia; and which already happened inIran a long time ago. There is now going ona vital battle between democratic and nondemocraticelements in all these countriesand, in most, the non-democratic elementscurrently have the upper hand.

The other negative we might take intoaccount is that while democracy has beenfound to be a remarkably hardy plant overthe long-term, it is also subject to interludesof non-democracy. The current generationsin Western Europe, the US and many othercountries are the first to not have knowna major war. It is easy for us to forget thatsomething might yet happen in our lifetimeswhich changes that extraordinarily fortunate,historically unusual state.

So, we might risk making a few predictionsfor the future. The first is that enthusiasm fortraditional democracy in developed countriesis likely to recover as their economies do;people will obviously take to the streets lesswhen their pockets and bellies are full.

The second is that in the very long term, suchdemocracy is still rather likely to graduallytake hold in all countries. However in the longterm, as economist John Maynard Keynes wisely noted, we are all dead.

And the third is that pseudo-democracyis likely to continue and perhaps extend,although this will be a negative trend, wherecertainly a number of such countries will stop being anything more than token democracies.Chinese citizens, after all, get to vote: thecrashing irony is that there is only one party.

In short: in some less enlightened parts ofthe world, there is already a politics 2.0,which is a rather unpleasant and disturbingphenomenon. A half-democracy, in reality,is no democracy at all. But for most ofus, politics 2.0 could in the end, perhapssurprisingly, turn out to look suspiciously likepolitics 1.0. And perhaps that is no bad thing.

This post first published at Subterraneans, a new magazine available for download here

Friday, 10 January 2014

Recently there seems to have been an odd acceptance by some right-wing commentators that Britain is to “sleepwalk to a Labour win”, as the Telegraph’s Matthew D’Ancona put it. It may be a genuine belief, rather than a way of giving Cameron a sly wake-up call. But if only that outcome were so sure from Labour’s current position.

On the contrary, when we look back on the third year of the Miliband project, we might struggle to see it as the success-filled year of the winning team.

For a start, any midterm year which an opposition ends with both a party and a leader less popular than at its start – as pollster Anthony Wells has observed – can hardly be declared an unqualified success.

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About the blogger

Activist, free thinker, Labour Party management team through 2001 and 2005 general elections, responsible for Labour's early web presence and creator of its first-ever national electoral register. Dad to two lovely little girls. Now work as project/programme/interim manager for an evil multinational, with a sideline in political commentary.

Politically think of myself as a loyalist (rather than a parrot). Member of Progress and the Co-op. My posts are vetted only by my, er, own sense of discretion and propriety. I've worked in business for many years, so have no truck with anti-business prejudice. Like social/ethical business, co-operatives and sustainability. Fought one general election and longlisted by NEC panel to be Labour candidate in 2010.